Rs 1 lakh gone from account after ‘SIM-swap’ call

Source: Times Of India

A 28-year-old woman was cheated of Rs 1 lakh on May 3 by a man who claimed to be an executive calling from her telecom operator’s office.
“I am using Airtel for the last 10 years. On May 3, I received a call from a man, who identified himself as a customer care executive, and asked me to reveal my Aadhaar number for the verification process. He then sent me an SMS which he asked me to forward to 121 (the customer care number),” Nidhi Sharma, a resident of Sector 10A, told the police.

Allegedly, the man told her that after forwarding the message, her mobile number would get deactivated for 24 hours by when the verification would be completed.

The message, that the accused sent, had a 20-digit number. Within 5 minutes of Sharma forwarding the SMS, her SIM got deactivated. “In the meantime, I noticed some alerts on my email id about some net-banking login attempts,” Sharma said. She realised that she had been cheated and immediately called her bank’s customer care, asking them to block her account.